Category Archives: Blog

In my new The World Post piece, “More Help Needed for Syria’s Disabled and Maimed,” I discuss some of the visible and invisible wounds afflicting Syrian refugees of all ages and abilities in Lebanon. For young Syrian refugees, trauma even affects their imaginations and creative play. For example, when I was making art with young Syrian refugees in Beirut, one of the boys composed the photo above using cans he sits on while shining shoes. He insisted that only one of his legs should show. It’s no coincidence that in Syria he saw his uncle’s leg shot off in the war — an incident which comes up frequently in conversation and his photographic creations. To me, this image powerfully displays the intersection of his own trauma and his uncle’s injury and disability from the Syrian war…

I’d like to share with you my new Huffington Post/The World Post piece, “More Help Needed for Syria’s Disabled and Maimed.” The piece draws upon my experience of working with Syrian refugees with disabilities and other people with disabilities in the Middle East. Thank you for any help in sharing this timely piece to raise awareness about this important issue which, unfortunately, has been completely ignored by the mainstream media…

It’s Eid break here in the Sultanate of Oman, so I’m taking off with some colleagues to go explore different parts of the desert for my research…

Wishing all of those celebrating Eid al-Adha a peaceful and joyous holiday. If you need any cooking inspiration, here’s a link to some mouth-watering recipes. Enjoy!

I was very sad this morning to learn that baseball legend Yogi Berra passed away last night. For many years, my mother worked closely with Yogi, and he was like a member of our extended family. I first met Yogi two decades ago when I was the captain of my softball team — over dinner, with his legendary humor and charm, he gave me wonderful advice on how to play ball and be a good leader. While I was always astounded by his record on the field, I came to appreciate him even more for his record off the field in promoting sports as a way to build community, foster ethical conduct, and empower people from different backgrounds. I remember being particularly moved by his insistence on recognizing women in sports, promoting gender equity, advocating for social justice, and making his baseball camp accessible to children with disabilities. He wanted everyone to experience the joy of baseball. From driving to our home on Christmas Day to serving up many memorable moments with my mother at work and on the road, Yogi was always a warm and inspiring presence. Yogi had a wonderful, full life, and he will undoubtedly be very missed by his many fans — and, most of all, by those of us who were lucky enough to meet and know him (and yes, he really did speak in Yogi-isms all the time)…

When I was studying West African dance and music in Mali, I marveled at my music teacher’s impressive command of the kora. To appreciate the soothing sound of this complicated instrument, watch this short video of a celebrated kora master from Mali, Ballake Sissoko, playing “Nalesonko” from his album At Peace.

As an Egyptologist, I’ve encountered many mummies in the field — especially while working at the Great Pyramids of Giza. There’s nothing quite like watching bones from thousands of years ago emerge from the sand — but a new exhibit is trying to replicate the sensation. Mummies: New Secrets from the Tombs, a traveling exhibit from Chicago’s Field Museum, opened this week at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibit, which features a wide sample of mummies, takes a unique look into the rituals involved in the mummification process. To learn more about this exhibit, please click here.

Keywords / Key Questions

With Heather Love, Sayantani DasGupta, Lennard Davis, Robert McRuer, Rayna Rapp, & Sunaura Taylor
October 1, 2015 from 6:15 – 8 PM
October 2, 2015 from 9 AM – 5:30 PM
418 Barnard Hall (James Room), 3009 Broadway
New York, NY 10027

This upcoming symposium at Barnard College will mark the publication of Keywords for Disability Studies, a collection of 60 essays that identify and define key terms in the field. The artists’ panel on October 1 featuring Sunaura Taylor, Riva Lehrer, and Park McArthur will address the topic of “Keywords for Disability Culture.” On October 2, speakers Eva Feder Kittay, G. Thomas Couser, Heather Love, Mara Mills, Elizabeth Emens, Lennard Davis, Robert McRuer, Katherine Ott, Faye Ginsberg, Rayna Rapp, Sayantani DasGupta and others will discuss their terms and identify key questions for the next stage of disability studies scholarship. This event is free and open to the public. For a detailed schedule, please click here.

I love teaching at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat — it’s an honor and joy to be educating the future of Oman…

As an Egyptologist who has worked on excavations at the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt (with Cairo University & Brown University) and a site adjacent to the Royal Pyramids of Meroe in Sudan, I really can’t get enough of pyramids. So I read with great interest recently that Derek Welsby, a curator at the British Museum, and his team uncovered the remains of 16 pyramids with tombs underneath in a cemetery near the ancient town of Gematon in Sudan…

Leaving the beach at sunset, I turned around for one last photo — and caught a woman who was fishing waving to her friends in the sea…

Another day, another beach! Every week-end, I hop in the car with my colleagues in Oman to explore beaches in or near Muscat. On Friday, I had the opportunity to visit the beach at Qantab–a traditional Omani fishing village (above) which is home to a lovely bed and breakfast. On Saturday, we enjoyed a long, luxurious swim off the coast of a secluded beach in Al Qurum (below). There is no shortage of spectacular beaches to explore in Oman…

This winter, I was a guest of honor and speaker at the international Sufism in India & Central Asia conference at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. It was wonderful to meet with scholars of Sufism from around the world. Sufism in India is a hot topic these days. Next week, Columbia University will be hosting a conference on Sufism in India and Pakistan: Rethinking Islam, Democracy, and Identity. Details about the conference are below.

Sufism in India and Pakistan: Rethinking Islam, Democracy, and Identity
September 25 @ 9:00 am – September 26 @ 5:00 pm
Columbia University
Knox Hall, Room 509
606 West 122nd St, New York, NY 10027 United States

In contemporary politics, Sufis have been very much a part of the discourse, politics, and practice of Islam in the modern world. Western analysts often perceive Sufis as potential allies, and many incidents of violence against Sufis reinforce the notion that Sufism can be the antidote to intolerant and fundamentalist Islam. Yet Sufi practices and politics are much more complicated than these simple assertions would suggest.

This part of the Sufi Islam project, focused on South Asia, aims to increase our understanding of how Sufi groups have positioned themselves politically and socially in the modern world and with what consequences. This workshop will convene an interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the impact of local politics and socio-cultural processes, global policy strategies, and scholarly commitments on the development of Sufism in recent decades while placing these recent developments within a deeper historical context.

Education groups associated with the United Nations kicked off a campaign this week to raise $250 million to send one million Syrian refugee children to school in Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan. Having spent a great deal of time with young Syrian refugees working on the streets of Beirut, I’ve seen how far they’ve fallen behind in their education over the past few years. In addition to missing out on classroom learning, many young Syrian refugees have also missed out on playtime and recreational activities — which are essential for personal development, creative discovery, and experiential learning.

It wasn’t until I began taking young Syrian refugees on “field-trips” to experience their first horse ride, boat ride, and carnival ride that I realized how starved they were for time to “just be kids” — and enjoy a day off from shining shoes. The precious time that millions of Syrian refugee kids have lost in their educational and personal development cannot be recovered — these kids will be living with the consequences of missing out on school and a peaceful childhood for many decades to come…